“And how are we today, Mr Pawluk?” she prattled as he examined the pile of envelopes, parcels and packages which had accumulated at the back of the post office since he last came into the village – and he was beginning to think it had been a very long time since he was here last.
“We?” he muttered. “We? I’m fine, I have no idea about you. Nowak been about?”
“I saw Mr Nowak not ten minutes before you arrived,” said the woman. “Going into the, er…” She nodded at the bar.
“Here, put this in a bag,” he told her, thrusting an armful of his post at her. “I’ll be back for it later.” And he thumped down the steps of the post office and across the road and into the bar.
Inside, Nowak was sitting at a table, looking at a bottle of Wyborowa and two glasses. “Heard you were about,” he said. “Drink?”
Paweł pulled up a chair and sat and watched Nowak fill the two glasses with vodka. They drained their glasses in silence, and Nowak refilled them.
“So,” he said, taking an envelope from his jacket pocket, “a writer.”
“A writer.” Paweł took the envelope, inspected its contents, removed the money and pocketed it.
“He’s booked the Lodge for six weeks,” Nowak went on. “Says he needs the privacy or something to finish his latest novel, fuck him.”
“Fuck him,” Pawl agreed, and they both drained their glasses again, and once again Nowak refilled them.
“He’s paying full price though,” Nowak said. “The whole Lodge, not just the ground floor.”
“When does he arrive?” Paweł was not a lazy man, but he could foresee some busy days ahead getting the place tidied up. It had been a while since he had done any cleaning at all in the Lodge.
“Friday.”
“What’s today? Monday?”
“Wednesday.”
“Fuck.” Paweł emptied his glass again.
“He says he doesn’t want any special treatment,” said Nowak. “Says he’ll cook for himself.” And the two men had a laugh about that because the last person who had said they could cook for themselves at the Lodge had almost burned the place down.
Paweł was looking at the rental documents from the envelope – Nowak’s business renting out the Lodge was far too ramshackle to include ereaders and tablets and palmtops. “Don’t recognise the name,” he said.
“Writers,” Nowak said. “Fuck ’em.”
“Fuck ’em,” Paweł agreed, and they drank again. Paweł stood up and fastened his coat. “Better get the place ready for him, then.”
Nowak poured himself another drink. “Better had.”
Outside, Paweł drew himself up straight and marched across the street to the post office, where he barked orders at the woman behind the counter until she handed over his bag of post. Then he headed back into the woods, weaving only very slightly.
2.
THE TOURIST WAS very young. He had a beard, and a limp, and he affected the look of someone who had had a hard life, but Paweł, who had had a hard life, knew the difference. This tourist, this writer, was just a boy.
He arrived early in the morning, while Paweł was sitting in the privy. He heard the sound of boots crunching twigs and leaf-litter underfoot, and when he buttoned himself up and went outside there was the boy, dressed in jeans and a black padded ski-jacket, a big olive-green canvas kitbag slung over one shoulder, leaning on a walking cane and grinning.
“Hey,” said Paweł, walking towards him. “This is private property.”
“I know,” said the boy, smiling and holding out a hand to shake. “For the next few weeks it’s my private property.”
Paweł didn’t shake hands. He thought it was a habit for city people who didn’t trust each other not to be carrying weapons.
If this bothered the boy in the slightest he gave no sign. He kept smiling and stuck his hand back in his pocket and gestured with his cane at the lodge. “It’s in pretty good shape,” he commented.
“How did you hurt your leg?” Paweł asked.
The boy looked down at his leg, then at Paweł, and he grinned. “You know, you’re one of the very few people who’s ever asked me. Most folk assume I won’t want to talk about it. I had a ballooning accident.”
Paweł raised an eyebrow. “Ballooning.”
“Slight miscalculation in weight-to-lift ratios.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “To be honest with you, I’m getting too old for all that stuff.”
Paweł shrugged.
“That’s when I started writing, anyway,” the boy went on, starting to walk around the Lodge with Paweł in tow. “While I was in hospital.” He turned and winked at Paweł. “Word to the wise, Mr Pawluk. Anyone who tells you those bone-knitting devices don’t hurt? They’re a liar. Here, have a watch.” And he cheerfully produced from his pocket a complicated plastic box-thing containing one of the ugliest watches Paweł had ever seen, a chunky garish thing with a fat plastic bracelet.
“Go on, try it on,” the boy urged, and Paweł put it on, and the boy smiled. “There,” he said in a satisfied voice. “Don’t take it off, though. Good luck charm.”
SO PAWEŁ WORE the watch during the days and weeks of the boy’s occupancy of the Lodge. He hated it and was determined to sell it the moment the boy left, but he made sure the boy knew he was wearing it.
Not that he saw much of him. Sometimes he saw the boy out for walks in the woods near the Lodge, but mostly he stayed indoors – writing, Paweł presumed. Once or twice he walked past one of the unboarded windows of the Lodge on his way to do some chore or other, and he caught sight of the boy inside, using one of those computers where you typed in the air instead of on a keyboard and your arms got sore after fifteen minutes. There seemed to be quite a lot of computer equipment in the room with the boy, actually. Lots of things with screens and lights and cables. A lot more than Paweł remembered him bringing with him.
On the other hand, Paweł told himself as he got ready for bed one night, they’d had guests who were much, much worse. He remembered a party of Belgian businessmen who… well, it had put him off ever visiting Belgium. And then the six Maltese who never said a word to him, and possibly even to each other. They were spooky beyond belief.
He was too old, too slow. As he tried to turn a pair of strong, beefy arms wrapped around his waist and lifted him off his feet, waltzed him around until he was facing in the opposite direction, then a shadow lunged out of nowhere and stuck a length of gaffer tape over his mouth and before he had time to do anything about it a huge hand had grabbed both his wrists, pinning them together while someone else wrapped more gaffer tape around them. Three. Were there three of them? Or only two? It couldn’t be just one person; there were too many hands. He hadn’t even had time to try to shout.
Two. There were at least two. One carried his upper body; the other one held his feet immobile, and in this way he was carried through the cottage, past the body of Halina, lying on the kitchen floor with her throat cut, and out into the moonlight.
Where the boy was already kneeling, his clothes torn and his face bloody, hands clasped behind his head. Paweł was dumped beside him, forced to his knees, and he felt the cold muzzle of a weapon brush the back of his neck. “Teach you to steal from us,” said a voice behind him.
The boy said something in a language Paweł did not recognise, and all of a sudden the clearing seemed to be full of bees and hot, sticky rain and the sounds of large things falling to the ground, and when it was over and he opened his eyes he saw five large black-clad men lying around the clearing, apparently chewed to death by something with millions of tiny teeth.